My friend and I were discussing townhouses–in our case, the ones in Washington, D.C.–and she mentioned that connecting attics in rowhouses were a plot point in C.S. Lewis’s The Magician’s Nephew. The attics of each house in the row are connected by a tunnel of sorts made by the roof on one side, a brick wall on the other, and a series of rafters on the bottom.
Is this a common feature in rowhouses, or just something from those in the story? It doesn’t seem like a particularly good security feature…but it is one that often shows up, especially in older buildings? I’ve never lived in a connected house, so I really have no idea, but it certainly was a cool point in the story.
Any other odd bits of information about townhouses would be interesting to share.
In my experience, not unusual in 19th and early 20th century British housing. The security of the house isn’t a big problem, it’s possible to fit a lockable ceiling hatch.
All modern semi-detached and terrace (row) houses have solid brick walls between the attics. I think this is a fire-prevention requirement more than for security reasons. This stops any fire in one house spreading to adjoining ones through the roof space.
Fire rated assemblies are required for all attached housing in the United States. It need not be brick, but it has to meet a fire rating of a certain standard.
For modern construction in the US, that is a true statement. However, there are countless properties which were built prior to the inception of fire walls. Many of them burn each year.
I lived in a townhouse-style apartment in the early 80s where the attics connected - this was useful when I accidentally locked myself out once and a neighbor got into my place through the drop-down stairs. Similarly, in an apartment I’d been in the year before. Both of those places probably dated back to the 60s, construction-wise.
Our townhouse built in 1987ish did not have a connecting attic.
Nor did it have a firewall, however; it had fire-retardant plywood in the roof (which was apparently the usual way fires would spread from one unit to the other). This was cheaper than a true brick firewall.
I lived in a row house as a child. There were no connections between homes. However it was very common for someone to ask to climb onto a neighbor’s porch roof (via a bedroom window) if they locked themselves out of their house. Nobody locked their upstairs windows just for this convenience.
Fire retardant plywood didn’t prevent spread of fire through a common attic space, which is what claims those dwellings unless we can get up on it to effect a trench cut ahead of the fire front. Once fire gets into an attic, it consumes the supporting members below the roof decking material.
Fire retardant plywood was a problem in itself, as the product used to make it fire retardant didn’t play nice with the glues bonding the layers together, leaving a roof panel with the structural integrity of Velveeta. Most of it has been removed, by now, but I still encounter it now and again-usually visible from the ground as it sags between the roof joists.
Just to add some info, many fires start in common attic dwellings because of power theft. Each unit typically has a bare bulb light fixture above the attic hatch to illuminate their space. If tenant A has their power cut off for nonpayment, they put Edison adaptors into their and neighbor B’s light fixtures, and steal power with a male to male extension cord, feeding their unit with a piece of 16 gauge wire from the neighbor’s service.
Huh - interesting. So not only was an inferior material used, it WOULDN’T WORK even if it weren’t crap.
Our roof was one such - it was replaced when the house was about 6 years old. At that, it held up longer than some others on our street, but it eventually started drooping. I’m surprised some are still around - the stuff hasn’t been used since the early 90s.
I live in a Washington DC rowhouse. It was built around 1890 to 1900. We aren’t sure when it was built but we found stuff in the attic from 1896. In our case, the attic does not connect to a neighbor’s house. From what I’ve seen of my neighbor’s homes, most of the attics don’t connect but at least some of the crawlspaces under the houses do.